Chapter One Hundred Seventeen: ‘Riddle in the sand...’
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‘So what do we know?’ said Garovel, addressing the full audience of investigators, which now included the three Najirs and their accompanying reapers. ‘We don’t have the luxury of a DNA test to confirm whose blood this is or even if it all belongs to poor Fuad here, but we are all in agreement that these blood patterns seem strange, at least.’
‘It’s difficult to tell,’ said Qorvass. ‘Given the extent of mutilation, one would assume that there would be plenty of blood on the walls, counters, and ceiling, but it is only on the floor.’
‘Which suggests that Fuad was not killed here in the south kitchen,’ said Atalim.
‘But that could also be consistent with Ibai’s story,’ said Qorvass. ‘He said he teleported AFTER colliding with the body. We assumed he meant from one end of this room to the other, as described by the two separate blood stains, but he could have just as easily teleported twice. The first teleport would have been from wherever the murder took place.’
“Can any of you corroborate that?” asked Asad. He was staring at the group of reapers who’d been close enough to sense Ibai.
They each shook their head.
‘He was too difficult to follow,’ said the one bound to Lorenzo Delaguna. His name was Marosso, Hector was pretty sure.
Garovel decided to move on with the summation. ‘Pretty much everything we’ve found points to Ibai. He was also the only one in here just prior to the disappearance of the soul that we can only presume to have been Fuad’s. That’s fairly strong evidence that he consumed Fuad’s soul, even if we DO assume that he didn’t actually murder him.’
“However, the position he was found in was also odd,” said Carlos Sebolt. The thick lines of his middle-aged face deepened as he spoke. “His foot was stuck inside the body, as if he had decided to stomp the boy to death, but this is inconsistent with the extensive mutilation. He would’ve had to tear the body to shreds in a matter of seconds before suddenly resorting to stomping. Why would he have done that?”
“Because he’s an aberration,” said Lorenzo Delaguna. “It’s no use trying to understand how they think.”
Hector had a pretty good idea whose side that guy was on. Not that he completely disagreed with him.
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.
Hmmm,didn't spot any missing words.
ReplyDeleteAnd the plot keeps on thickening...
ReplyDeleteQuestion: if encountering a newly released soul while using their abilities... does an Abomination even have the ability to turn down the absorption of it, or is it automatic? In addition, if automatic, who would know that?
ReplyDeleteWell he has to kill and then teleport. Also, I can't be sure but the kill might have to be with his shadow specifically.
ReplyDeleteThe way aberrations think might be strange, but it isn't completely alien or particularly complicated. Ibai throws some new things into the mix, but he is still primarily just a few simple human instincts heightened by lack of stimulation, and the affectations of his upbringing, which fortunately make him much less evil.
ReplyDeleteThat's my point: we've only got Sir Nutso the Psychotic as a comparison to go on. And, half of Geoffrey's tendencies may not have only come from one condition, given his stunning similarities to Grandad. :P Given the chance to devour, he'd never hold back, even given that option. But, all we saw was him coming up with more over the top ways to do that after killing. :P
ReplyDeleteIf all known abominations have been like him partially down to how they were raised or family traits... how much does anybody outside of Abolish actually know how they do what they do? Or under what conditions?
I think that partly through luck and partly through wisdom and genuine good intentions, the Blackburns managed to raise an aberration in a manner that ended up with as decent and well-balanced of a person as it is really reasonable to expect an aberration to become. I'm pretty sure that they generally turn out evil, although Abolish does all that they can to make them more so.
ReplyDeleteI think the big thing was actually that they found a way to punish him, because I think normal aberrations lack empathy due to their own lack of understanding of suffering. Because they can't feel pain themselves often enough to find it unpleasant rather than novel they are understandably curious, and can't relate to someone who could actually complain about a new sensation.
Also, we have it on good authority from several characters in several factions that Geoffry is a pretty typical study in aberration behavior. Of course, genetic material from mister "ten rabbits, ten hats and one machete" probably didn't help any.
By the way, the term is "aberration", not "abomination".